Lucky or Unlucky?

Human history is the sum of the many contributions by individuals over time.

Some individuals we consider good. They have tried to make the Earth a better place, and we try and emulate them as best we can.

Some we consider bad. We record their destructive ways and use them as examples of what not to do.

Luck may have had something to do with their results. Some people are born lucky.

We also know of people, some of them friends or even relations, who are perennially unlucky. Their lives consist of one disaster after another. Some we may have read about.

There is the strange case of Tsutomu Yamaguchi who survived the first atomic bomb blast when he was visiting Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 only to experience a second atomic explosion when he returned home to Nagasaki a few days later. He was 29 at the time. He survived and lived to the ripe old age of 93; so perhaps he wasn’t so unlucky after all.1

On the other hand, there are people like Elmer Sherwin who have experienced extraordinary good luck.

In 1989, Elmer won a 4.6 million-dollar Megabucks slot machine jackpot at the Mirage in Las Vegas. After that success, he was determined to see if he could win another one. He did. In 2005, he won 21 million dollars at the Megabucks slot machine at the Cannery in North Las Vegas.2

And just to show that extreme luck can run in both directions simultaneously, there is the case of Frano Selak, who survived a bus wreck, a train derailment, a couple of car explosions, a plane crash, driving a car off a cliff, and won a million dollars in the Croatian lottery.3

These extreme cases of individual luck are localized events. Some are more global in nature.

For instance, how does one describe an individual whose life at first glance seems perfectly normal, but on closer inspection, is discovered to have quietly created global disaster after global disaster while professing no apparent ill will to either the planet or humans in general? Was it simply the luck of being in the wrong profession at the wrong time, or something else? Was he cursed from an early age, or simply born under a bad sign? Perhaps, it is a case of global bad luck?

Thomas Midgley, Jr. was a mechanical engineer and chemist.

He was born in Pennsylvania in 1889 and began working for General Motors in 1916.

He discovered that Tetraethyllead (TEL), a special lead additive to gasoline, reduced knocking in internal combustion engines.

Knocking is something that is not a particular issue with today’s automobiles due to computer-controlled fuel injection, but in the early days it was a significant problem as manufacturers tried to make faster and more powerful motors.

Knocking reduces engine life and in extreme cases blows the engine apart.

It occurs when part of the fuel/air mixture detonates rather than burns. One can hear it as a loud tapping sound when older model cars with manual transmissions climb a hill in too low a gear.

Midgley found that adding TEL to gasoline raised the temperature that the fuel/air mixture needed to attain before exploding. It reduced detonations and preventing knocking.

This was no small discovery. Automobile companies had been trying to deal with the problem for years, and here was a solution. But they were not the only industry to profit from Midgley’s work.

Oil companies had been adding ethanol (alcohol) to their fuels as an anti-knock compound for some time, but the results on the bottom line were poor because it was expensive. Gasoline sold at prices only slightly higher than the cost of production. TEL, on the other hand, made the manufacturing of no-knock gasoline much more profitable. It was a match made in heaven, or hell as it turned out. TEL contained lead in sufficient quantities to be extremely toxic.

Lead poisoning has been around for thousands of years. It is the oldest known workplace and environmental hazard. What was new in the 20th century was the understanding that only a small amount of lead exposure was toxic.

In 1923 General Motors, in cooperation with DuPont, opened a prototype chemical plant in Dayton, Ohio for the exclusive production of TEL, which was marketed under the name Ethyl with no mention of lead.

This was the same year that Midgely decided, after receiving a prestigious award, to take an extended vacation in Florida to try and rid himself of the lead poisoning that he knew he was experiencing.4

Soon after the Dayton plant opened, workers began to experience the symptoms of those who had recently been poisoned by large amounts of lead. Two workers died as a result while many workers suffered from chronic depression, another workplace side effect of lead poisoning. In spite of increasing reasons for concern, the issues were ignored.

Unhappy with the speed of production, GM and Standard Oil of New Jersey created the Ethyl Corporation specifically for TEL production, and a new plant was set up in New Jersey. Within the first two months, five more workers died while many others were sickened.

To counteract this alarming evidence, the Ethyl Corporation began a steady campaign of denial that was somewhat successful from a publicity standpoint, but workers still suffered from lead exposure. More deaths followed and were met by further denials of responsibility.

Eventually, in 1924, Midgley, in a Public Relations move, participated in a press conference to demonstrate the safety of TEL by pouring it over his hands and then inhaling the vapors for a minute or more saying that he could do this daily with no difficulties, or bad effects.

Unconvinced, the state of New Jersey ordered the plant closed, while Midgley, a few months after the press conference, went to Europe to get treatment specifically for lead poisoning.5

TEL continued to be added to gasoline, but better methods of production were developed that decreased the risk of lead poisoning for factory workers.

Just how destructive was the overall effect of TEL on the planet?

In the 1950s Clair Cameron Patterson began work on outlining the geochemical evolution of the Earth. One of his findings was that deep ocean levels contained 3-10 times less lead than surface water. On examining ice cores and measuring the amount of lead traces, he was able to determine that the addition of TEL to fuels marked the beginning of significant lead contamination that was many times greater than suspected.

It was so bad that he made it part of his life’s work to raise awareness of lead poisoning. It was due to his campaigning that, in 1973, the Environmental Protection Agency began a phased removal of lead fuel additives with the results that lead levels in Americans dropped by some 80% and clearer skies became more normal over cities.

How many people ultimately died or were harmed by TEL is hard to determine with exactness, but it is safe to assume that anyone who has lived in the United States between 1923, the advent of TEL, and the 1970s has been harmed, including a significant portion of the world’s population, because the technology was exported to other countries and used extensively. It is also thought that lead poisoning may have contributed to the above average criminality and violence that occurred during this period.

With no further work in the TEL department, Midgley needed another challenge. He decided to get his wits around the problem of refrigeration. Prior to the 1920s, air conditioning and refrigeration units used anything from ammonia to propane and sulfur dioxide as refrigerants. Not only were these extremely toxic but often explosive. Death by either the leaking of air conditioning or refrigerator units was not uncommon. What was needed was a compound that could change from liquid to gas and back again easily and not react with other chemicals.

The concept that Midgley tried out was the combining of fluorine with hydrocarbons. The thinking was that the bond between fluorine atoms and carbon atoms would be so strong that it would not react with other chemicals and thus could be considered inert or non-reactive. Eventually his team synthesized dichlorodifluoromethane, better known as Freon-12. It was an instant commercial success and revolutionized the refrigeration and air conditioning industry overnight. It also became the propellant of choice in all spray products from deodorants to hair sprays.

Award followed award.

It was not until the 1970s that various studies began to discover that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), of which Freon was a significant part, might be destructive to life on Earth.6

Oxygen is usually found in a gaseous state in the atmosphere as a pair of atoms (O2). Ozone is formed when three Oxygen atoms combine (O3) usually as the result of electrical discharges such as lightning. Although there is not a lot of it, ozone forms a thin layer in the upper atmosphere that absorbs much of the Ultraviolet Radiation that is harmful to life. The layer is self-replicating because ozone breaks down when absorbing UV rays and then recombines in a continuous self-generating process that produces around 12% of the ozone layer each day.

Freon is extremely stable. Midgley was very right on that point. Freon and other CFCs are not easily broken down chemically nor are they dissolved by rain and washed out of the atmosphere. They simply float about and are carried by winds into the upper atmosphere. There, the strong UV radiation that the ozone layer absorbs and prevents from striking the Earth is able to break down the CFCs but only after long exposure (up to 100 years). Unfortunately for life on Earth, the breakup of each Freon molecule releases two atoms of chlorine.

One chlorine atom can break down about 100,000 ozone molecules. The overall effect is that ozone molecules are destroyed in greater number than they can be replaced by natural processes, allowing more and more UV radiation to strike the Earth and those that live on it.7

The environmental impact of Midgley’s second discovery is not only still creating problems but is likely to for some time.

The effects on humans in terms of cancers and on the overall environment is also hard to assess but it is surely significant for most organic life.

In 1940, at the age of 51, Midgley contracted polio. True to form, he invented an elaborate system of pulleys and chords to help maneuver himself; however, in 1944 he became entangled as the machine was operating and died as the result of strangulation.8

Thus ended the life of the single most destructive individual in the history of the world in terms of his impact on the Earth’s atmosphere and all that depend upon it.9

Did he know what he was doing? Did he know the consequence, or was it simply bad luck that dropped him into a situation that generated one ecological disaster after another?

Some who may consider themselves unlucky perhaps should reassess their situation in comparison.

Surely, he was a man who should have taken up golf rather than chemical engineering.